


already my memory blurs your face

by summerstorm



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He introduces himself for what appears to be the purpose of offering her a ride back to her dorm, or: three times Erica ran into Cameron Winklevoss, before and after Mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	already my memory blurs your face

**Author's Note:**

> Holiday fic for myr_soleil/myrifique.

Erica meets one of the Winklevosses a while before she's introduced to Mark. She's a freshman at BU on a date with a Harvard junior, and halfway through he suggests they go to a party, and she finds out he belongs to one of those finals clubs. He's trying to impress her, but she's kind of curious, so she goes, and mingles when her date vanishes in the crowd. After a few drinks, she stumbles into a tall, built guy on the way back from the restroom. She straightens up, eyes closed, sort of hoping he'll be gone when she opens them, but no; he's still there, eying her with a half-raised eyebrow and holding her elbow.

He introduces himself as Cameron, Cam—"Which one? You need to pick one. I hate when people make me choose and then get all weird because I'm too formal," she blurts out, and he settles on Cameron—for what appears to be the purpose of offering her a ride back to her dorm.

"How do you know I didn't drive here?" she asks, because she gets defensive when she's drunk, and some weird part of her is sensitive about not having a car since she totaled the last one. Yet, a little voice inside her adds—she doesn't have a car _yet_.

Cameron laughs and steadies her when she stumbles again. "Even if you did, you don't look like you should be driving now. I can call a driver if you don't want me to do it."

She takes a deep breath, and then shakes her head. "No. No, it's fine. Thank you."

He walks her to her front door when they get to her dorm, which isn't really necessary; she's fine, a lot less lightheaded than she was before. He tells her good night and to drink some water before she passes out, and she gives him a look that's supposed to say _bitch, please_ , but probably misses the mark by a lot. He squeezes her arm before he walks off.

Her date calls her in the morning sounding hungover and really, kind of offensively bored, and she matches his tone to say, "Don't worry about it, it wasn't going to work anyway." She hangs up before he answers.

It has nothing to do with Cameron. She didn't even get his number; she didn't even think of it. They'd spent less than thirty minutes together, and that 'together' was a lot more along the lines of 'in physical proximity' than 'getting to know each other.' So it really has nothing to do with Cameron.

That doesn't preclude her from wanting to see him again, in broad daylight and when she's a little more self-aware. But she's not surprised it doesn't happen, and she's certainly not disappointed. She doesn't think of it again until she starts dating Mark and he starts going on and on and on about finals clubs, fucking tunnel vision for a dude whose main appealing quality is how smart he is, and even then all she thinks about is it didn't seem that special when she went to one of their parties. Nothing out of the ordinary.

She doesn't mention it, because she's concerned Mark will beg to get him an in and, while that would be a nice way to turn the tables for a minute, she'd eventually have to tell him she doesn't know anyone who could help, and then she'd have to stand there while he mumbles shit about how 'of course, I should have known, you go to BU,' and resist the urge to punch him.

The next time she sees Cameron, thefacebook is already up and running, and she has half a mind to tell him to fuck off; she's nobody's revenge tool. She sees him first; he's about to sit down with his laptop and a tall cup of something when he spots her across the room and heads in her direction. It's her fault for not looking away.

He waves his hand vaguely at her and says, "Erica Albright?"

"I don't remember telling you my name."

"No, I know," he says. "You used to date Mark Zuckerberg..." The way he trails off sounds like a question, but it isn't one, so she doesn't bother answering. He obviously knows, or he wouldn't have said anything. He blinks a couple of times, tilts his head, and says, "Didn't I put you to bed once?"

"That's an unfortunately specific metaphor," she points out.

She doesn't say she's surprised he remembers, because he probably doesn't, and she kind of wants to know how Mark was a dick to him, exactly. She's not above hating on Mark yet, not after the way he treated her. She doesn't think about it that much anymore, but the resentment's there to rear its ugly head when needed. And all she knows about what happened is what she's been told by friends, or rather acquaintances; the only reason she realized Cameron Winklevoss was _that_ Cameron is her roommate googled him.

What she does say is, "I'm not going to sleep with you because we got fucked over by the same guy."

Cameron smiles at that, natural and a little surprised, nodding like he's kind of impressed by her bluntness—which doesn't happen all that often, even with guys she's been friends with for some time. He asks if he can sit down, puts his laptop back in his bag when she says yes. She gave up on studying a cup of coffee ago, but the textbook is still on the table, and he asks about it after a while and ends up explaining the macroeconomic concept she'd got stuck on in a way that could be incredibly condescending but actually mostly sounds like he's trying to help. It's not a hundred percent free of smugness, but it's a lot better than she's come to expect from Harvard undergrads.

This time, he gets her number, and they text back and forth for a couple of days before she gets caught up in finals; her replies fizzle out, and eventually so do his messages.

They run in different circles, and they would have ended up in different places anyway. It's probably for the best. They don't even cross paths when she's deposed, which isn't surprising at all. She only flies out for one day, anyway, so it's not like there's much chance of her seeing anyone. She doesn't even see Mark. She has an awkward elevator ride with Eduardo Saverin, but there are other people there, so they do little more than say hi. She doesn't think they would have had a real conversation even if they'd been alone, and she doesn't look for him when she gets out.

She doesn't look for anyone. She has grad school to think about, and a carry-on to get ready before a car takes her back to the airport.

Living in New York isn't exactly what she expected, but she gets used to it quickly and grows fond of it. Columbia treats her pretty well for all she thought she'd developed an aversion to the Ivy League when she lived in Boston. She dates around for a while, and keeps a boyfriend for nearly eight months, which is probably the longest she's ever been with anyone. She breaks up with him when he moves away; it's not that she's not willing to make long-distance work, though it seems like a headache, but more that the thought of it makes her realize she's not invested enough to watch the relationship wither when she could just cut her losses now.

It's her third summer at Columbia and the first she stays in the city; she's been meaning to turn her undergrad thesis into a book for a while, has a grant to do further research now, and she knows going home would just fuck with her productivity. Besides, she doesn't want to put her crappy, steady receptionist job on hold; she'd rather take her vacation time when she's swamped with schoolwork.

Her efficiency dies out anyway by August, with both her roommates gone and therefore no one to give her fond judgmental looks when she camps out in front of the TV and has breakfast cereal for dinner. She starts looking for things to do so she won't spend the first month of school in a daze, and she doesn't think anything of it when she adds a tech conference to her schedule. It has little to do with her line of study, but it could be helpful where she works, if only to make conversation.

She doesn't understand everything, but it's fun to branch out, and there's something satisfying about realizing she understands a lot more than she did back when Mark used to ramble on about his coding exploits. Besides, it's a lot less stressful than going to things where she expects herself to actually, like, mingle and talk and sound smart. Here, she can just snack some and go home afterwards.

There's another conference, this one on women's studies, she finds interesting early in October, but she's trying to stay ahead of her coursework, so she gives it a miss, and one in November that catches her with a pretty annoying case of the flu. It's only the first weekend of December that she says screw it and takes a couple of days off. She doesn't exactly want to sit at home and relax, though, because that always fucks with her ability to get out of bed in the morning when slacker time is over, so she finds things to do, and one of them is another tech thing, a little more organized than the one in August and with a longer list of speakers.

She's actually pretty surprised to see the Winklevoss twins there, and not as much that neither of them see her. She considers walking up to them during a break, but they're probably busy networking, so she refrains. There's some charity gala afterwards, and she can't afford that kind of dinner, so she leaves as soon as the hall clears out. It's raining now, water and footsteps making the snow still on the ground ugly and slippery, and she's steeling herself to hail a cab when someone touches her elbow.

She starts and slips on her heel, the hand on her arm catching her before she falls, and she starts to say, "What the fuck, dude?" before she turns around and looks up and realizes it's one of the Winklevosses.

"I wouldn't have expected to see you here," he says, and she raises an eyebrow. "I'm just saying, it never seemed like it was your thing."

"Learn something new every day," she says, and eyes the road again, groans before she can stop herself.

He breathes in a way that sounds a lot like a laugh. "Would it be corny if I offered you a ride?" he says, which makes her about seventy percent certain it's Cameron. Good enough for her.

"Is it your intention to make this into some kind of full circle thing? Because if so, then yes."

For a moment, he just looks at her, expressionless. Then, he explains, "I have a car out back. I don't want you to trip on the sidewalk and die."

"Don't you have a charity thing?" she says. He pulls his cellphone halfway out of his pocket, takes a look before letting it drop back in.

"Doesn't start for another thirty minutes."

He rides in the car with her, asks her what her interest in a tech conference is—"It's not political science," she says, and he asks if that's what she's studying, and she says yes—and actually walks her to her apartment, in a series of awkward steps. First she steps out of the car and he looks from her to the driver and back; she's already standing outside when he blurts out, "I'll walk you to the door. There's snow on the ground; I don't want you to have gotten this far only to fall on your front step."

"Why are you so convinced I'm going to fall?"

"Statistics," he says solemnly, and she lets herself laugh, because okay, yeah, this makes two out of three times they've met that she nearly fell in his proximity. Still—

"There were extenuating circumstances."

"Alcohol and snow," he says slowly, nodding as if to say, 'yeah, that's totally unexpected and unusual,' and she forces herself not to ask why in the world he remembers her, or if he even does. It's been years, and everything he's said probably applies to dozens of girls he's steadied and gotten home safely.

For all that it's pleasant to think she may have made some kind of impression—while drunk on cheap beer, sure—it's almost nicer to think of the situation that way. She finds it hard to fault him for lying if he's done what he's lying about so many times it's an effective shot in the dark with anyone he vaguely recognizes.

She lets him in because they're getting wet, and he hasn't done anything horrible to her to deserve having a door slammed on his nose before he even gets to say goodbye. "Come on, I'll walk up with you," he says.

"There's really no need for that," she points out.

"I'm trying to postpone going back as long as I can," he says. "Humor me."

She starts walking. He makes a few comments on the building, nothing overly disparaging. When they hit the first floor, he tells her he's moving to New York City— _has_ moved to New York City, but his place isn't ready yet, so he's staying at a hotel.

"That's not a hint," he adds quickly, and she feels the corner of her mouth quirk up.

"Good," she says, "because I only have the one bedroom to myself."

"Roommates?" he asks.

She shrugs and holds up two fingers. "And good friends."

He looks at her when they reach her door; she puts the key in and leans on her side without turning it, waiting for whatever it is he's trying to say.

"I don't..." he begins, and she raises her eyebrows at him. "You should come to dinner with me sometime."

"Uh huh," she says vaguely, nodding, "you don't know me."

"Exactly. It feels wrong that I don't know you," he says. She cocks her head at him. "I think I'd _like_ to know you; is that better?"

Erica presses her lips together, puts on a thoughtful expression. "It will do," she says, and takes his phone when he offers it, programs her new number into it.

"I'll call, but just so you know," he says before she's done, "I'm probably picking you up on Saturday. Around eight. I'll text you where we're going."

"You're pretty sure of yourself," she points out, and gives his phone back.

"Well, I just got a date with you," he says, walking off.

He's already a few steps down the stairs when she thinks to call after him. "And you thought _offering me a ride_ was corny?" she says, trying not to laugh and failing.

He just shrugs and smiles at her, a wide, bright grin before heading down again, and she finally remembers the key in the lock, her damp hair, the boots she's dying to get out of.

It feels weird to realize it _now_ , but—yeah, she kind of wants to get to know him, too.


End file.
